Oral Answers to Questions

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Tuesday 6th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about the importance of visiting both to the individuals living in care homes, and to their family and friends. Achieving the balance between protecting care home residents from the risk that covid might be brought into the care home, where it is so hard to control, and giving them access to visitors, has been one of the hardest areas to get right over the past few months. That is why in the summer we issued guidance on safe visiting and gave more freedom on the decisions about visiting to local authorities, with directors of public health working with care homes. I want us to continue to support and enable safe visiting for care homes.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We have to get through this grouped set of questions, and it is going to take us well into topicals time; the Minister really does need to speed up on the answers.

[Fiona Bruce]

I thank the Minister for the social care winter plan announced two weeks ago. Can she tell me when this half a billion pound infection control fund will be released to councils covering constituencies such as mine in Congleton, in order to help protect residents and staff over the winter?

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Hancock]

As the hon. Gentleman well knows, decisions on the distribution of any vaccine have not been taken. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation is the body that advises the Government on the appropriate clinical prioritisation of vaccines. It has published an interim guide, which he well knows about and we have discussed. That sets out the order of priority as an interim measure, but we await the data from the clinical trials of the vaccine before we will come to a clinically validated full roll-out plan. We are putting in place the logistical plans now, but on the decisions as to the clinical order of priority, we will take the evidence from the Joint Committee.

[Mr Speaker]

Can I just say to those on both Front Benches that these are meant to be short and punchy topical questions, not full debates?

[Jo Gideon (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Con)]

With many GPs surgeries adapting to coronavirus guidelines by holding surgeries outside, often in car parks, one of my constituents was left feeling embarrassed and upset by having to discuss a sensitive and personal health issue within earshot of other patients waiting in line. Does my right hon. Friend agree that in times when alternative methods are replacing the usual privacy of face-to-face appointments behind closed doors, GPs surgeries must be sensitive to the whereabouts and comfort of their patients to ensure that others do not have the same experience as my constituent?

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Hancock]

We have ended where we started this questions session: with my delight at a new hospital that has been funded and announced by the Prime Minister on Friday—Newgate in Northumberland. That is a very important development. My right hon. Friend makes a wider point about the importance of community hospitals, which are local to where people live. With modern advances in technology, we can deliver more services closer to people’s homes and in people’s homes, and then in community hospitals, while of course needing to build those superb hubs of science and care that our great hospitals are.

[Mr Speaker]

In order to allow the safe exit of Members participating in this item of business and the safe arrival of those participating in the next, I am suspending the House for a few minutes.